@IMAHAPYHIPPO said:
@MirkoS77: I don't think we're there yet. We may be dangerously close to that reality, but Nintendo's not giving up and quietly shutting things down on the Wii U after a year and a half. If we get through Christmas and find that Mario Kart and Smash Bros. haven't boosted sales in any noticeable way, a slow, painful death may be the fate of the weird little console. You can point to floundering consoles turning it around and note that the sales of those consoles weren't nearly this bad, but history doesn't solely determine the future. Nobody thought the Red Sox would come back against the Yankees in 04 -- down 3 games to none, a comeback from that deficit had never been accomplished -- but they defied the odds and won the World Series. Same goes for the four minute mile, and every other feat previously thought impossible.
Nintendo's down 3 games to none right now, but the gig isn't up just yet. If there's one thing a console has a mere year and half after release, it's time. And time will tell.
We'll see. The Sox coming back was a rarity. Possible? Yes. Likely or common? No.
I just don't see Nintendo all of a sudden changing 180^o in its strategy. Nintendo is far too conservative. Instead of taking the loss of billions as a signal they need to start getting more games out and becoming much more aggressive in everything they do, they instead hold the belief that they will hunker down under their shell, minimize expenditures AMAP, and weather the storm until they can correct themselves into a position of profitability, then they'll come out of their shell and start spending. This is a strategy that is not working.
It's been Iwata's Nintendo. Extremely conservative to a fault, and a large reason they are where they are today. A large portion of Nintendo's problems can solely be attributed to attitude and this is why I'm such a massive critic of Iwata and segway into criticizing him often when I speak on Nintendo. The CEO is responsible for the attitude of the company and kicking its ass into shape to perform. Iwata's not/has been shown to be incapable of doing this. Yes, there are many others involved in running Nintendo, but he is the captain of the boat. Personally, I believe if someone like Steve Jobs came back and was put in charge of Nintendo, asshole that he was, you'd see a drastic change in the company for the better in a very short period of time.
As it stands right now, Nintendo comes off as a timid, almost frightened company afraid of everything and that runs whenever there's any competition to be found. That has to change before anything else can, and as long as current management resides, it won't. Iwata's not going to wake up tomorrow as some type of Yamauchi alpha-male. Even if he's learned lessons, attitude transcends everything. And Iwata just doesn't have it. He lacks that killer instinct that successful CEOs require.
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